


do you still believe in love, i wonder?

by callunavulgari



Series: Heather's Favorites [21]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bottom Derek Hale, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, F/M, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mates, McCall Pack, Multi, Nogitsune Trauma, Pack Feels, Power Bottom Derek, Road Trips, Sibling Incest, Stiles is Derek's Anchor, Threesome - F/M/M, post season 3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1403842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If someone had told sixteen year old him that four years down the road he’d be in a hotel room in Greece having spent the last couple hours having sex with two very attractive werewolves, he would have laughed them right out the door. Now — Well, now he thinks he can probably get used to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do you still believe in love, i wonder?

**Author's Note:**

> This started with the simple fact that I wanted to write adorable incestuous werewolves who were wildly in love. Then I listened to a Cora/Stiles roadtrip mix that made me go, shit, I want that threesome in my life right the fuck now. When I heard _Hey Brother_ on the radio it was game over. This could have been over three weeks ago, but I decided that I'd wait until the last episode of 3b and then clean it up to make it canon equivalent. (At least until July.) So enjoy!

There’s only so much you can do to avoid looking at attractive people. It’s like some kind of spell—like a train wreck or a phenomenally bad movie—the more you try to walk away and turn your eyes, the more they gravitate towards them. Which is really kind of shitty, because not everyone enjoys being eyed like a slab of meat. Not that Stiles is imagining every attractive person he sees _that_ way, it’s just hard to ignore beauty when it’s staring you in the face and being all growly and stupidly hot. There’s _oh god bend me over that table right this second_ hot and then there’s simple _aesthetics._ Which makes it even more tragic that all werewolves are stupid sexy, but the Hales—the Hales are in a league of their own.  
  
So Stiles tries to ignore them, for the most part. He gives his heart peppy lectures every night, trying to talk himself out of making a fool of himself the next time Derek throws him into a wall or forgets that personal space exists. It’s hard, because he’s only human—he has next to no control over the way his heart gives shit away without his explicit consent. Like when Cora tucks her hair behind her ear and rolls her eyes at him, he’s profoundly aware of his heart doing a tap dance in his chest.  
  
When Cora comes back from her extended stay in South America—something that he hadn’t honestly expected, given the fact that the Hales as a whole have every reason to never want to see Beacon Hills ever again—it’s hard to ignore her.  
  
And Derek.  
  
And the way they act around each other.  
  
At first, he doesn’t bat an eye at it. Derek’s been in and out of Beacon Hills ever since she left, so he knows that they’ve been bonding. If anything, it’s nice to see them touch, the way they could never seem to bring themselves to when she first showed up out of the blue. For Derek, Stiles is pretty sure that he was either afraid he’d break her with his shiny alpha powers or that she would disappear. Like Laura. Like their parents. Like everyone he’s ever given two shits about. For her, it was probably more of the second, but who knows! Hales are weird, weird people and he’ll probably never understand them.  
  
But eventually, it starts to snag his interest. His eyes will track the way Derek brushes his fingers across her hip when he’s wandering through the kitchen, the way that she’ll pause, her own fingers barely brushing a box of popcorn, still on her tiptoes, and smile softly at him, the expression strange on her usually scowly face. Stiles notices things—he always has. It’s a problem that won’t be fixed by all the Adderall in the world, his attention wandering away from him and coming to stop on the first shiny thing.  
  
It’s the night that they’re all almost mauled by a pack of ravenous ghouls that he really starts paying attention.  
  
Derek isn’t the alpha anymore and he seems happy that way, has been for the last few years, ever since he gave it up for Cora, content to sit back and help Scott be the best alpha he can possibly be. Derek’s a better beta than he ever was an alpha and it shows. But that night, when a ghoul rips into the meat of Cora’s shoulder, he loses it in a way that Stiles hasn’t seen since they lost Boyd. It’s not like she’s even that hurt, but he just… loses it. Rips the ghoul to pieces and doesn’t stop until the ones nearest to him are completely decimated. Then he just staggers over to Cora’s side and _drops_.  
  
_Right_ on top of her.  
  
Stiles, who’d been pretty damn busy trying to cover their asses as Scott and Kira kept the rest of the ghouls off of him, stops and stares as they wrap their arms around each other, murmuring too quietly for him to make out. As he watches, Derek pushes his nose into the curve of her neck and inhales, eyes bright and blue in the gloom. They hold that position for a solid thirty seconds, just breathing each other in, and then Derek presses a quick kiss to the space behind her ear, and pulls them both back to their feet. And then they go right back to fighting, like nothing ever happened.  
  
After that, he can’t not notice the way they touch each other—the way they look at each other with expressions that he’s only ever seen on the disgustingly lovey-dovey. It’s weird. Weirder than normal, anyway. He rationalizes. He researches. He does some only slightly skeevy snooping. Nothing like going through their underwear drawers or anything, but he does keep watching them, cataloguing each touch and rating it on a scale of slightly touchy siblings to oh god oh god incest. He makes a chart.  
  
Okay, he obsesses a little.  
  
And then one day, when the rest of the pack is bickering loudly in Derek’s living room, and it’s just them and Stiles in the kitchen, he watches Cora give Derek a soppy look as he tucks her hair behind her ear, and snaps a little.  
  
His coffee slops over the side of his favorite mug as he slams it down on the counter. To his pleasure, they both jump, turning to look at him with wide eyes. “Okay, I’ve had it. Is this thing between the two of you—is it a werewolf thing or what?” he demands, gesturing wildly at what little space there is between them. “Are all born werewolves so up in each others grill or is it just you two? Because I _really_ cannot figure out if you’re actually bon—”  
  
He’s cut off with a squeak as Cora launches around the counter, backing him up until he’s smack against the wall—familiar territory as far as he’s concerned, Hales pushing him around. He’s used to it, even if Derek’s cut back on it hugely since de-alphaing, but it still takes him by surprise when she fists a hand into his shirt and lifts him clear off the ground, eyes glowing yellow.  
  
“Shut up,” she hisses, voice more wolf than human. He’s pretty sure that she won’t hurt him, but with his feet dangling, he doesn’t want to take any chances, so he just nods. After a moment, the wolf fades from her eyes and with a huff, she sets him back on the ground. “Just… c’mon.”  
  
Bemused, he follows her out of the room, and then when she doesn’t seem to be stopping, out the front door. Distantly he’s aware of the pack making questioning sounds at their back and Derek saying something in response, but he ignores it, jogging a little to keep up with Cora, who’s burning a path down the stairs and across the parking lot.  
  
She comes to a stop next to the camaro and glares at Stiles until the car unlocks. He blinks and glances over his shoulder and yep, there’s Derek, reaching right past Stiles and sliding into the driver’s seat. Cora rounds the car and gets into the other side with another glare at Stiles. The camaro purrs to life next to him and it occurs to him after a second of idling that they want him to get in.  
  
It could be a bad idea. It really could. But he’s turning twenty in two months and his best friend is their alpha. Plus, they’ve totally outgrown trying to kill him. At least, he hopes they have.  
  
In the end, he gets in the car.  
  
.  
  
Their destination is apparently the little diner just outside of town—the one that all the truckers and road trippers use when they need a place to drink some coffee and take a piss. It’s quiet enough in the afternoon that it gives them some privacy and no one from Beacon Hills usually comes here, because there’s a far superior diner back on Main Street with even better prices.  
  
Wordlessly, they sit down, Cora and Derek sliding into one booth and leaving the remaining one for Stiles. They sit in silence while they wait for the waitress. The look on their faces makes him nervous, so he stays quiet, leg jittering, watching them watch him. When the waitress finally shows up, Cora orders pancakes and a hot chocolate, so Stiles decides to go ahead and order eggs and toast to go along with his coffee. Derek orders, oddly enough, hot tea and a single side of bacon.  
  
When the waitress leaves, they stare at each other for another minute before Stiles gets fed up, flinging up his hands and demanding, “So?”  
  
Derek flinches, but Cora gives him this steely look and very calmly, pointedly, brings her and Derek’s joined hands up and lays them across the table. Cora’s paler than Derek. He hadn’t really noticed before, but now, seeing their fingers twined together, the contrast is almost jarring.  
  
He blinks and is surprised by how much it doesn’t feel like the world is getting jerked out from under him. “So I was right,” he says, clenching and unclenching his hands beneath the table. The seat is greasy and kind of gross under his palm.  
  
“You can’t tell anyone,” Derek tells him quietly, the first words he’s spoken since the kitchen.  
  
Stiles snorts. “It’s not like you guys are being really subtle.”  
  
Cora growls at him, leaning forward like she’s going to go for his throat, before coming to a quick and immediate halt when the waitress returns with their drinks. The lady—Judy, according to her name tag—must sense the tension, because she’s quick to set the drinks down and wander off again.  
  
“We aren’t stupid,” she hisses once Judy is out of earshot. “Most people just don’t jump to _incest_ right off the bat.”  
  
“It wasn’t my first guess!” he protests, scowling. “I made charts! There was a whole system! It’s not my fault that my conclusions drew up a big fat romance fit to usurp Scott and Allison’s in sophomore year.”  
  
And anyway, it’s not like he’d _really_ known until now. He had his suspicions, but nothing concrete. They’re the ones who gave it away.  
  
“How are you guys hiding it from everyone else anyway?” he asks curiously after yet another awkward minute drags by. “I would have thought what with your big old sniffers keeping a secret like this would be impossible.”  
  
Cora rolls her eyes, but this time it’s actually Derek who speaks. “We already smell like each other.” The _because we’re family_ goes unspoken. “And like Cora said, we aren’t stupid. We’re not going to show up to a pack meeting smelling like come.”  
  
Stiles must make a face at the unwanted images, because Cora straight up snarls at him, eyes flashing yellow.  
  
“So, uh, how exactly did this even end up happening? Did you just decide one day, hey, I think it would be a great idea to bump uglies with my sister?” His tone is positively dripping with sarcasm.  
  
The two of them exchange a look that Stiles can’t fathom, holding what looks to be an entire conversation with their eyebrows before Cora huffs an annoyed sigh and shrugs.  
  
“One of my trips to visit her. That’s when it happened,” Derek tells him, taking a quick sip of his tea. He makes a face and immediately adds a packet of sugar.  
  
Stiles’ face does something complicated, but alas, he has never possessed the Hale ability to speak with his face alone, so he has to elaborate. “Yeah, _but how_?”  
  
“That’s really none of your business,” Derek growls, and yeah, there it is. That’s more like Derek.  
  
“Fine,” he shrugs.  
  
“Fine?” Cora repeats, her tone skeptical.  
  
Stiles leans back in his seat and sighs as the waitress returns with their food, setting everything down and promptly making herself scarce without a word. Which is kind of unfortunate. He wanted some jam. “Fine,” he says again. “I’ll keep your weird Lannister secret. No problemo.”  
  
“Cersei and Jaime were twins,” Derek says, rolling his eyes.  
  
“Like that makes it any better?” Stiles drawls, dipping his toast in egg yolk and taking a bite. It tastes faintly of rubber.  
  
Cora’s still looking skeptical and Derek looks like he sucked on a lemon, but neither of them are currently threatening to drag him to Deaton so he can make his word magically binding or something, so he goes back to eating.  
  
.  
  
The problem though, is that even after Derek drops him off at home with one last promise of secrecy, he can’t stop thinking about it.  
  
Lying in bed that night? Thinking about it.  
  
Lunch date with Lydia and Danny on Tuesday? Thinking about it.  
  
The next time he sees Derek and Cora, when they’re having their weekly training session? _Definitely_ thinking about it.  
  
For the most part, things are normal with them. They both start developing weird tics though, where they’ll sporadically send Stiles furtive, tense looks and then go back to looking like they’re ignoring him. And the thing is, it kind of sucks. The ignoring that is. Because up until now, he’s been getting along with them pretty well. If he had to pick a pack member other than Scott to have his back, it would be Derek. Well, depending on the peril. If it was a smarts thing it would probably have to be Lydia.  
  
But he’d gotten used to having quiet chats with Derek, who was surprisingly geeky underneath his gruff exterior. The first time he’d told Stiles, in a completely spot-on Batman impression, “I am the night,” he’d nearly died laughing. And Cora—well, it was hard to be completely cool with Cora, because she had all of Stiles’ ability to revert to sarcasm at the best of times and all of Derek’s standoffishness—but he’d been getting somewhere, somewhere close to friends.  
  
So it kind of really sucked, the silence.  
  
Worse than that though, is that they stop touching each other as much. They go back to acting like they had when Cora had first popped up in their lives, still loving, but awkward, like they can’t trust their limbs within a foot of each other, ignoring the way they orbit each other like the planets go ‘round the sun.  
  
It’s an all elbows relationship and it’s painful to watch.  
  
He feels guilty, both for making them feel that they have to hide it again and for how his brain is still circling around the idea of them together. The disgust he’d expected to feel is curiously absent and he doesn’t know if he should blame it on the fact that he’s an only child and therefore can’t possibly comprehend the severity or pin everything on George R.R. Martin. Or George Lucas. Or that Folgers commercial.  
  
Scott notices eventually, but doesn’t do much except ask, “Are you fighting with Cora and Derek?”  
  
Stiles snorts and blows up Scott’s marine, the controller sweaty in his palm. “Nope.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
And that’s that. God bless Scott’s attention span.  
  
He tries not to think about it, he really does. But again, it’s like a train wreck. Like those fucked up videos on the internet that you can’t click away from even though they make you want to puke. The more he tries not to think about it—about the way Derek’s fingers would make indents in the smooth skin on Cora’s back or the way that she’d roll her hips—well, the more he tries not to, the more he does.  
  
The first time he jerks off to the image of them together he feels so skeevy that he has to take a boiling hot shower afterwards.  
  
The second time, he just feels kind of nauseous—not because the images were disgusting, but because it feels like such a breach of privacy, like he’d feel if he jacked off to the image of Scott and Kira or Danny and Ethan. Ugh.  
  
He’s supposed to be taking a year off before college, because his magical emissary what the fuck ever apprenticeship thing with Deaton is currently more important than furthering his education, something his dad doesn’t entirely agree with, but he still spends a couple hours a week looking through college brochures. Sometimes he brings them with him to pack meetings, talking with Lydia about how she’s doing at Stanford, and whether he should try for there or maybe do something overseas. He catches Cora and Derek eying him whenever it comes up and wonders if its because they’d rather he leave, now that he knows.  
  
He’s not sure how that thought makes him feel. But he’s pretty sure it’s flat smack-dab in the middle of sad and lonely.  
  
.  
  
The night before his twentieth birthday, Cora and Derek crawl through his open window. He’d been sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning, his dreams full of creatures with pointy teeth who asked him riddles in creaky japanese and the memory of jumbled letters that refused to form words. He wakes with a stifled scream in the back of his throat and Cora’s palm over his mouth, Derek peering at him over her shoulder. They both look worried, which makes his brain, still half asleep, scramble to figure out why they could be in his room.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Cora asks, after she’s removed her hand from his mouth.  
  
He glowers at her, panting and sweaty. “A nightmare.”  
  
They let him regain control of his breathing in silence, Cora taking a seat on the bed beside him as Derek looms over her shoulder like an incredibly attractive boogeyman. It takes a little while to wrestle the panic clawing its way up his throat back down, but eventually, he gets it under control. He always does.  
  
“How often does this happen?”  
  
Derek’s trying to keep his voice quiet, but it still seems loud in the stillness of his room. He glances at the clock which reads… 3:37 AM. Great. Well, he guesses he is twenty now. Or something. Yay.  
  
The words _all the fucking time_ are on the tip of his tongue, but he gets a good look at Derek’s face, haunted and tired, just in time and reigns the impulse back in. “Enough,” he says instead, fiddling with his sheet instead of looking either of them in the eye.  
  
“Is it about—” Cora starts and Stiles nods jerkily, reminding himself that she wasn’t here for that bit. She doesn’t know first-hand what it was like for him when the nogitsune was carting around his body like a fucking puppet. She doesn’t know that everyone’s more or less made an unspoken agreement to never ever talk about all the people that Stiles’ killed while he wasn’t quite himself or how at the end, he’d nearly impaled himself with a sword just to make it stop.  
  
Or Allison. They don’t talk about Allison. Ever.  
  
Derek had helped save him from it. He hadn’t punched his teeth through Stiles’ doppelganger the way Scott had or skewered him with a samurai sword like Kira, but he’d gotten Talia’s magical nemeton box there all the same. Sent it off with Isaac so that when the nogitsune tried to make a flashy get away, it found a prison instead. They’ve never talked about it, but sometimes, Stiles thinks that Derek has nightmares about him too.  
  
“Sorry,” Cora murmurs into the quiet a few minutes later.  
  
“It’s fine,” Stiles sighs, suddenly exhausted. But god, does he so not want to go back to bed. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get over his fear of going to sleep, the memory of being afraid that he wouldn’t wake up himself acrid and visceral.  
  
“We came to apologize,” Derek tells him before the silence has the chance to stretch again. Curiously, Stiles looks at him. He can’t tell much in the dark, but he’d almost think that Derek looks sheepish.  
  
“We’ve been ignoring you,” Cora cuts in, twiddling her thumbs on his knee. The motion tickles a little. “It’s not okay.”  
  
He shrugs. “It’s fine.”  
  
“It’s not,” she growls. “You’re pack.”  
  
“And you’re important to us,” Derek adds.  
  
That’s what makes Stiles do a double-take, but nope, still Derek. Stiles cocks his head, looking at them both carefully. He wonders what they smell on him in that moment—hope, puzzlement, an inexplicable desire to beat them both over the head with something hard, but not deadly. Like a wiffle bat.  
  
“Okay…” he breathes, dragging all the vowels out in that way that he knows gets on Derek’s nerves. “That’s cool, I guess.”  
  
Cora rolls her eyes and reaches over to punch Derek in the arm. Stiles winces. He knows how much those hurt. “You are, okay?” she tells him, ignoring the glare that Derek sends her way. “And we’re going to stop ignoring you, because it’s not fair.”  
  
She takes a deep breath, but it’s Derek who says the words, gently, as if he remembers a night spent in a pool four years ago. “We trust you.”  
  
Stiles blinks at them, at the moonlight drifting lazily through his window. He’d check to see if he’s dreaming, but that would probably be slightly offensive, which would completely fuck up the progress that they’ve just made. “Thanks, I guess,” he finally settles on.  
  
Cora doesn’t roll her eyes at him again, but she looks like she wants to. After another minute, she leans in and presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “Happy birthday, Stiles,” she whispers into his ear, and just like that she’s out the window and gone.  
  
He’s left blinking at Derek in her wake, who’s still standing there staring at him. He looks thoughtful rather than grumpy, which is good. “Did you want us to stay with you?” Derek asks, shifting uneasily at the foot of Stiles bed. “For the rest of the night? Because of the—”  
  
“Nightmares. Yeah, no, I got this,” Stiles says, waving a hand dismissively. He probably won’t end up going back to sleep. Maybe he’ll go downstairs and have a cup of coffee—make dad a lunch that’s better than heart-healthy lunch meat and a side of broccoli and watch early morning infomercials until his brain starts to bleed.  
  
Derek nods jerkily and hesitates, then, to Stiles’ complete and total astonishment, bends and presses a kiss to the same spot that Cora had. “Happy birthday, Stiles,” he echoes and follows in his sister’s footprints, leaving Stiles alone with a headache and a very confused boner.  
  
.  
  
“I should have known this would happen,” Stiles sighs.  
  
It’s a week later and his hands are cuffed behind his back, his head is pounding because chloroform headaches are the worst, and he’s pretty sure the dank, smelly room he’s woken up in is moving.    
  
Across from him, Derek gives him a look.  
  
“You know, this never happens to me when you’re out of town,” he accuses with half a glare, testing the handcuffs. He groans. Whoever kidnapped them this time, they were distressingly thorough.  
  
“Scott told me about that time with the harpies,” Derek tells him, raising a brow.  
  
“Okay, that was one time—”  
  
“And that time with the crazy banshees.”  
  
That time wasn’t his fault at all. It’s really not his fault that they’d been so intent on having Lydia join them. She’d even told them no and everything. He’d just made the mistake of being a little too vocal about her refusal. How was he supposed to know that it would piss them off?  
  
“Okay, so it happens when you’re not here too,” he admits, leaning back and clunking his head into the side of the… semi-truck that they’re in? He does it again and the metal clangs. Now that he’s listening for it, he can hear the sounds of traffic around them and can definitely feel the truck moving beneath them. Damn it. Definitely a semi-truck. Or a U-Haul, but he’s pretty sure it’s too big for that.  
  
He takes a deep breath in through his nose and carefully doesn’t think about how unlikely it is that the pack will pick up their scent from inside a moving vehicle. Now he’s really wishing that he’d gotten those tracking amulets working sooner.  
  
“It smells like something died in here,” he says a handful of minutes later, wrinkling his nose.  
  
“Something probably did,” Derek sighs, which — not helping!  
  
They pass the time in silence for the most part. They’ve been in this situation too many times, so he watches Derek struggle with his shackles—which look far more durable than his and are actually _chained_ to the floor, go figure—for some time, his mind churning with half-formed plans.  
  
“What do you think they want with us?” he asks at last.  
  
There’s a beat of silence where he’s hoping Derek, unlike him, is actually managing to dredge up some memories as to how they got here, but then Derek shatters his dreams by biting his lip and shrugging.  
  
“Damn it,” Stiles hisses, thumping his head back again.  
  
“It could be anything,” Derek says, shrugging again. “Werewolves aren’t rare, but they’re valuable. And you… well, witches are pretty valuable too.”  
  
“Not a witch,” Stiles snorts.  
  
Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “You do magic. You’re taking lessons with Deaton. _Yer’ a wizard, Stiles_.”  
  
Stiles can’t help himself, he throws his head back and cackles. “I knew you read the books,” he says a moment later, wiping tears from the corners of his eye with his forearm.  
  
“I never said I didn’t.”  
  
Another minute passes. A car honks outside.  
  
“Still not a witch,” he whispers. “Deaton calls me a _spark_.”  
  
Derek scoffs. “Fancy wording doesn’t change what you are any more than calling me a lycan doesn’t change the fact that I’m a werewolf.”  
  
Stiles rolls his eyes and tries to focus on the traffic outside. “Whatever.”  
  
Four hours later and the truck has stopped to gas up once, which means they’ll probably be stopping again sometime soon. No one’s come back to check on them, but there are less cars on the road now and no light making it through the cracks, so it’s probably night.  
  
The last thing Stiles remembers is having lunch with Scott and Kira, so unless they lost more time than they should have, they’ve been gone for most of the afternoon at least. Someone will know that they’re missing by now.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Derek had said to him an hour ago. “Cora will find us.”  
  
It was curious that he didn’t say _Scott will find us_ , what with him being the alpha and all, but Stiles figured that he kind of had a point. Cora was the most motivated and she’s been a wolf her entire life. She has the highest chance of tracking them down, regardless of Scott’s alpha powers.  
  
Now he’s just twiddling his thumbs, going over defensive runes in his head in the hopes that one of them will help him out when shit hits the fan.  
  
“This really wasn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to go on a roadtrip this year,” he finally sighs, fed up with the silence. He’s amazed he’s kept quiet this long. Him and enclosed spaces haven’t really gotten along for quite some time.  
  
Derek makes a funny sound in his throat, clears it, and says, “Don’t worry, when this is over I’ll take you on a roadtrip, Stiles.”  
  
“Will Cora be coming too?”  
  
Without the light coming in through the cracks, Stiles can’t see a damn thing in the truck. Everything is black to him, except for the two spots of blue that occasionally blink in his direction. So he knows that Derek is looking at him, but beyond that, he has no idea what the ensuing quiet means.  
  
“Yeah,” he eventually says. “Pretty sure she’d insist.”  
  
True. A flash of a thought comes to him—the two of them and Stiles crammed into the camaro, fighting over the radio. He wonders if they’d camp it out in the woods or find a hotel like civilized folk. He bets that they’d want to sleep in tents the whole time, just the three of them and the sounds of the forest. Which brings to mind the image of the two of them curled around Stiles, arms thrown around him to get to each other.  
  
He’d be thankful for the darkness hiding his blush right now if he didn’t already know that Derek can totally see him, even if Stiles can’t. Fortunately, he doesn’t say a word.  
  
.  
  
It takes another four or five hours for anything to happen. And by ‘happen’, he means that the driver gets out of the truck and is either getting an appallingly long blowjob from a random drifter or the fucker booked himself a hotel for the rest of the night.  
  
“This is fucking bullshit,” Stiles whispers for the second time, gritting his teeth and straining against the handcuffs. God, he’d sacrifice his first born for a lock pick right about now.  
  
“Get some sleep, Stiles,” Derek commands. “Don’t think I can’t smell your blood.”  
  
Stiles pauses guiltily, acutely aware of where he’s scraped the skin from his wrists. They aren’t bleeding badly, but if he keeps up, they will be.  
  
“I can’t sleep like this,” he hisses, glowering out into the darkness. Derek’s had his eyes closed for a little while now, in that weird not-nap state that he goes to sometimes, but they blink open when Stiles’ heart flutters in his chest, the panic that he’s had locked down all day finally surfacing. He’s not thinking about a dark basement or the way the nogitsune had smiled at him through the slats of the locker he was stuck in. He’s not.  
  
_Let me out,_ Stiles had screamed, the privacy of his own head assuring that no one would hear him.  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Come here,” Derek whispers.  
  
Stiles stares at him, which just makes Derek growl. “I know you aren’t chained up like I am, so scoot your ass over here right now.”  
  
He doesn’t question it. He scoots. He scoots forward awkwardly until he feels Derek’s breath on his forehead, blue eyes flaring up a couple inches away from his.  
  
“Now lay down.” Stiles must make a weird face, because Derek starts growling again, the rumble impossibly loud in the quiet. He nudges Stiles with a shoulder. “Put your head in my lap and go the fuck to sleep.”  
  
Derek’s thigh is warm under his cheek. Stiles listens to the thumping of their hearts until sleep finds him.  
  
.  
  
The next day brings more of the same, only this time he’s hungry, thirsty, and really needs to piss.  
  
“You don’t think they’ll leave us in here forever, do you?” he whispers.  
  
He hasn’t moved far from Derek. When he’d woken up as the truck started earlier, he’d just rolled into a sitting position, so they’re sitting with their knees pressed together.  
  
Derek shakes his head. “That would be really dumb,” he says, his voice strained.  
  
An hour later, Stiles growls and staggers to his feet. “This is fucking stupid, I am not pissing myself right now. Hey, if I pee in this corner will I like, gas you out or something?”  
  
Derek grimaces. “No, but we’re in a moving vehicle. If we accelerate and I get piss on me, _I will actually piss on you_.”  
  
He pauses. “Okay, hold it. Got it.”  
  
“No, you should go ahead and do it. Maybe in the other corner, though.”  
  
Derek sounds angry. A year ago, two years ago, that wouldn’t be weird. Stiles has gotten far too used to Derek Hale, zen master, since Cora came back. When he hesitates, Derek looks at him and bites his lip. It’s a nervous gesture and that makes Stiles nervous. “They’re trying to humiliate us,” Derek explains. “Have us piss ourselves. Maybe even starve us out, depending on how long they intend to keep us back here.”  
  
“Maybe they want you to break down and eat me,” Stiles jokes, concentrating on how he’s going to get his hands around to his front so he can shimmy his zipper down. He’d been through this with his dad before, so he knows how, but the possibility of a dislocated shoulder is not one that he’s looking forward to.  
  
Derek doesn’t laugh. In fact, he looks kind of constipated. “Oh god,” Stiles groans. “They totally want you to eat me, don’t they.”  
  
“Don’t be stupid, Stiles. I’m shackled to the floor. I couldn’t get to you if I tried.” He looks kind of shifty when he says it though, like he’s not too sure of himself.  
  
Stiles curses. He’s just starting the process of shifting his arms up over his head when something occurs to him. He stops, turning wide eyes on Derek.  
  
“Dude,” he breathes, shuffling forward a few feet before dropping to his knees just in front of Derek.  
  
Derek blinks at him. “Can you shift like this?” he asks, his mouth dry.  
  
“Not a full shift. I’d break every bone in both of my arms and they wouldn’t heal back right.”  
  
“What about a partial one?” Stiles asks, excitement creeping into his voice. “Just enough to get your claws out.”  
  
Derek blinks again, his eyes flaring blue. After a moment, he nods. If Stiles had both hands available to him right now, he would totally do a victory dance.  
  
“Okay, bigger question now. Very important,” he starts, already grinning, because this is practically formality. He can totally trust Derek to do this. “Do you think you could cut a rune into my cuffs if I tell you how? Without looking?”  
  
.  
  
It takes them a while. A very long while, because Stiles insists that with each cut, he has Derek look at it. In retrospect, it probably would have been a better idea for Derek to cut it into _his_ cuffs, so that Stiles could go around and check, but whatever. He trusts Derek not to blow up his hands.  
  
“Will that be an issue?” Derek asks in a dangerous voice. Stiles flinches when Derek’s claws prick against his wrist.  
  
“Maybe?” he laughs, sheepish. “These runes are pretty volatile when you fuck them up. The last one detonated, but the one before that just kind of sighed at me.” It was weird. The sighing magic scribbles.  
  
Derek growls at him. He’s warm against Stiles’ back, where they’re pressed together. It’s nice, because wherever they’re at right now, it’s getting colder in the truck. Stiles has been able to see his breath for the last three hours, which means they’re heading north.  
  
After another hour, it’s finally as good as it’s gonna get.  
  
“Okay,” Stiles says, grinning at Derek. “Wish me luck.”  
  
“Good luck,” Derek breathes, eyes never once leaving his.  
  
His palms are sweaty when he presses his fingers to the rune, but he knows from experience that it won’t matter. It’ll either work or it won’t.  
  
Stiles closes his eyes, feels out the engraving, and thinks, release me.  
  
The detonation is small, just enough to blow out the cuffs. It doesn’t hurt and his hands are free. He breathes out, sloppy with relief, and stares at his hands. One of the cuffs is still attached to his left wrist, but the other has dropped to the floor in a heap of mangled metal. His wrists look terrible.  
  
“Okay,” he sighs, dropping down next to Derek and wiping his sweaty brow. Derek is grinning at him, teeth stupidly white in the dark. “That went well. Now for you.”  
  
It takes less time for him to get Derek loose after he finds a shard of glass in the far corner of the truck. When all four of Derek’s limbs are free—over kill in his mind, but probably smart for someone who wants to keep a werewolf contained—they just sit for a minute, considering.  
  
“We have two choices,” he tells Derek, rubbing flaking blood from his wrist. “We can wait for them to stop, sneak out, and hope they don’t have wolfsbane bullets with them, or we can jump.”  
  
“Jump,” Derek says immediately, which Stiles was prepared for.  
  
He snorts. “That’s all well and good for you, but ickle humans don’t heal when they jump from semis going seventy miles an hour.”  
  
“I’ll protect you,” Derek tells him earnestly. God, his face is so stupid.  
  
“But how?” he protests, mind churning. Derek just rolls his eyes.  
  
“Here,” he grins, getting to his feet. “I’ll show you.”  
  
.  
  
Jumping out the back of a moving semi truck is probably one of the stupider ideas they’ve had, but luckily enough, there are huge snow banks on either side of the road that they can aim for.  
  
“Hold onto me,” is the only warning Stiles gets before Derek is seizing him up, tucking his body around Stiles’ like a giant blanket, and leaping.  
  
They land in the snow bank, thank baby jesus. Derek grunts when Stiles lands on top of him and he’s pretty sure he heard something crack beneath him, but Derek doesn’t complain. They both watch as the truck fades from sight, holding their breath. When it shows no signs of stopping, Stiles gives in to temptation and punches a fist into the air triumphantly.  
  
“So where do you think we are?” he asks, crawling slowly to his feet. He looks around, but the only thing he can see is snow and trees. Derek doesn’t follow him up, choosing to stay on his back in the snow, glaring at the sky. Maybe he’s in a little more pain than he thought. “Hey man, you okay?”  
  
“Spine,” Derek growls through gritted teeth. “Gimme a minute.”  
  
“Fuck,” Stiles hisses, staring at him with wide eyes. “Do you need anything?”  
  
Derek snorts. “This won’t take too long, Stiles. Don’t worry. Also, we’re in Canada.”  
  
Who the fuck would kidnap them and take them to Canada? How the fuck did they even get over the border? And what part of Canada? He doesn’t like this, not one bit. Maybe they’ll get lucky and they’ll be a couple miles out from Vancouver or something.  
  
In the five minutes it takes for Derek’s spine to heal up, Stiles has pissed, and is already starting to shiver. They’ve got a couple hours of daylight left, which is good. What little sun is making its way through the clouds is enough to keep him from turning into an ice cube. Probably.  
  
“Which direction should we head?” he muses, shuffling his feet in the snow. It’s already starting to seep into his sneakers. Not for the first time, he wishes that their kidnappers had left them a phone or something. That would make this easier.  
  
“South,” Derek answers promptly.  
  
Stiles nods. Makes sense. Away from the crazy trucker and back towards the states and also, warmer climates. Jesus fuck, it’s cold.  
  
They walk along the shoulder for awhile, Stiles stumbling along after Derek. As they walk, he lets himself drift, trying not to concentrate on how fucking cold he is. He’s not thinking about how he’s lost feeling in his toes and fingers, how his teeth are constantly chattering. He’s wearing a fucking plaid button-up over a t-shirt, which is warm enough for Beacon Hills this time of year, but not fucking _Canada_. At least Derek’s still got his leather jacket.  
  
He probably shouldn’t be surprised that Derek’s more focused on the road ahead of them. He’s gotten closer to the guy over the years, but even if they were BFFs, this is just how Derek gets. He focuses on one thing and sets his entire body into accomplishing the task. Stiles should be glad that the pace he’s set is one that Stiles can actually keep up with.  
  
It takes another hour of walking before they see a car—a car which happily ignores the little dance they do trying to get the driver’s attention.  
  
“Fuck,” Derek hisses, glowering at the retreating vehicle. He glances at Stiles for the first time since they started moving and immediately does a double take. Then he pales. Dramatically.  
  
“Your lips are blue,” Derek tells him, closing the distance between them. The hand he settles against Stiles’ cheek is absurdly warm—almost hot—and he nuzzles into it without thinking. He doesn’t even try to talk. His teeth are chattering up a storm. He’d probably only bite his tongue if he tried.  
  
Distantly, he hears Derek curse again. He knows all about frostbite and hypothermia, which is unfortunate, because he knows exactly what’s going on with his body right now. He whimpers when a gust of wind slams into him. At least he can still feel the cold. If he couldn’t, they’d be having some serious fucking problems right now.  
  
He blinks when something warm and heavy settles over his shoulders. Derek’s closer than Stiles thought he was, hands apparently trying to rub some warmth back into Stiles’ arms. He looks touchable like this, in just a simple white t-shirt, without the armor of his leather to hide behind.  
  
“Hey, hey, hey,” he’s whispering, rather urgently. “It’ll be okay. You can do this. It’s almost springtime, it can’t be that bad.”  
  
Stiles gives him a look. “It’s February,” he tries to say, derisive and incredulous. The words don’t come out altogether intelligible.  
  
“Close enough.”  
  
He staggers along for as long as he can, Derek shooting increasingly worried glances his way each time he stumbles over nothing or slips a little on a patch of ice. By nightfall though, he can’t feel the cold, and is forced to succumb when Derek scoops him into his arms.  
  
Stiles is in and out for awhile after that. His brain struggles to form thoughts and he can’t make sense of what’s going on around him. He gets glimpses, his nose tucked up against Derek’s chest. He thinks that Derek is running, because his heart is going a mile a minute. Very clearly, he remembers seeing a sign: Omineca Provincial Park, clear as day against the backdrop of snow and trees.  
  
What feels like minutes later, there are voices. Derek’s: urgent, punctuated by slightly labored breathing. Then there’s the voice of two strangers, a man and a woman, both absolutely horrified and too loud.  
  
“It’ll be okay,” Derek gasps and there’s a tugging sensation at his hips. When he looks, it’s Derek’s hands, carefully removing his pants. He makes token protests at that and a minute later, at the removal of the coat and his shirts, but the words slip away as easily as they slipped off paper before.  
  
God, he hasn’t been this cold since he, Allison, and Scott took their ice baths to find their parents. Thinking about Allison hurts though, so he has to stop. Scott said that she couldn’t feel anything when she died too.  
  
“You can’t put him in the bath,” the girl’s voice comes a minute later. “It’ll cause heart arrhythmia. Here—these are all the blankets in the cabin. Wrap him up and stimulate his core, not his limbs. Jesus, why the hell wasn’t he wrapped up?”  
  
Their voices fade away and the next thing he knows, he’s sinking back into darkness.  
  
.  
  
He comes to in an unfamiliar hospital, with Cora hovering over him. Her hair is hanging in long, unkempt snarls, like she couldn’t be fucked to brush it for the last few days. There’s a smear of dirt across her cheek and what might be a streak of blood across her neck. When she sees that he’s awake, her eyes flood with relief, and she slumps back onto the chair behind her, like she can’t possibly remain standing for another minute.  
  
“Don’t ever do that again,” she whispers, her hands shaking.  
  
He makes a choked sound that doesn’t quite make it past the oxygen mask strapped across his face. He fumbles around, trying to get his limbs to cooperate enough to pull it away from his face, but they’re uncoordinated and clumsy. Also, wrapped in bandages. Fortunately, Cora realizes what he’s trying to do and reaches over to do it for him.  
  
“Where’s Derek?” he rasps, because that’s more important than asking her where the rest of the pack—Scott, his _dad_ —is right now. She sighs and gestures… to where Derek’s passed out on a chair in the corner of the room. “Scott and your dad are a couple hours out. I got to the cabin just as they were loading you into the ambulance, but they were a day or so behind me.”  
  
Her breath hitches and for a moment, she looks like she’s going to punch him. Instead, she slumps forward, resting her head on his chest and fumbling around until she finds his hand. “You had us all scared shitless. You and Derek both, but when I got there. God, Stiles, you almost _died_.”  
  
He flinches. In some part of his mind, he’d known that. Hypothermia wasn’t something you fucked with.  
  
“Is Derek okay?”  
  
She snorts, her breath hot against his chest, but doesn’t move her head. “Of course he is.”  
  
He nods, because that’s good. Werewolves and all, odds were he was fine, but Stiles had to make sure he didn’t kill himself running around in a t-shirt while trying to get Stiles to safety.  
  
He’s so fucking tired, jesus.  
  
Cora sighs, like she can tell that just from the beat of his heart. It must be loud to her, with her ear pressed up against his chest like that. Apparently she doesn’t mind though.  
  
“Seriously, don’t do that again. You scared me.”  
  
He’s pretty sure that it was Derek who scared her, but whatever. He doesn’t say anything. After a moment though, she pulls back, her eyes huge and god, wet. She isn’t crying yet, but there’s a definite sheen of tears there. It makes his heart thump loudly in his chest.  
  
“You do know that right? Sure, I was scared for Derek too, but when I saw you. I thought you were dead, the way Derek was looking at you. _You_ scared me. I care about you. Both of us do.”  
  
They’d told him that before. That he was important to them. He hadn’t really believed it then and he’s still having trouble now, but it’s easier, seeing Derek pale and exhausted in the corner and her with tears in her eyes. It’s weird as fuck, but he’s starting to get it.  
  
“Okay,” he whispers, and she nods again, sniffs loudly, and settles her ear back over his heart. And maybe that means something too, that she’s so desperate to hear his heartbeat that she has to be that close to it, even though she could hear it across the room.  
  
“Get some rest, Stiles,” she whispers.  
  
.  
  
The next time he wakes up, Scott and his dad are both hovering over him with identical looks of relief on their faces, and the Hales are nowhere to be found.  
  
.  
  
In the week following them getting back to Beacon Hills, he spends a lot of time curled up in bed, listening to audiobooks and podcasts. He’s lucky that the frostbite was only second degree. Sure, the blisters are a pain, but at least he isn’t going to lose any fingers or toes. In that week, most of the pack shows up to check on him.  
  
Cora and Derek are notably absent.  
  
It should annoy him. If he’s being honest with himself, it does a little bit. Hurts too, especially after Cora’s spiel about them caring about him so much. But he’s so exhausted with everything that he just… doesn’t care.  
  
Apparently, the kidnapping was for some weird bullshit spell that a coven of witches somewhere in the Yukon were cooking up. One werewolf plus a witch of the same pack to be sacrificed on the new moon. And since most witches don’t run with werewolf packs, they had to get them imported. Basically, stupid bullshit, but according to Scott, it’s been taken care of.  
It takes two weeks for his dad to let him out of the house and the first thing he does is track down Deaton so he can get a head start on finishing those goddamn tracking amulets.  
  
He makes them for the entire pack and has Scott deliver Cora and Derek’s. When he asks, Scott gives him a weird look, but pockets the amulets anyway.  
  
When that’s done with, he spends a couple days training with Kira and Malia, because after all that bullshit, his muscles feel like wet noodles. He likes training with them, because while they don’t go easy on him, they’re good at knowing his limits.  
  
After, they’ll get coffee and Stiles will tell them with tales of whatever weird magic he’s learning that week.  
  
“Why are you avoiding Derek and Cora?” Kira asks on one of these outings. She’s frowning at him over her steaming mug, a faint sheen of sweat still across her brow. She swipes at it halfheartedly, eyes never once leaving his.  
  
“I’m really not the one doing the avoiding,” he admits, somewhat grouchily. Malia perks up beside him, cocking her head in confusion.  
  
“They were so worried about you though,” she tells him, puzzled.  
  
“Not worried enough apparently,” he replies with a fake grin that doesn’t fool the girls one bit. They drop the subject though, which is lucky, because he really didn’t want to get into it about the Hales anyway.  
  
Of course, that’s the night that Cora and Derek decide to creep in through his window.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he asks immediately, eyes still fixed on the computer screen. He doesn’t need to look to know it’s them. Everyone else uses the front door. They all know where the spare key is, Cora and Derek just choose to ignore it.  
  
“We came to apologize,” Cora says, and he’s hit with a disorienting bout of deja-vu. He shrugs though, jerkily.  
  
“Okay, apology accepted. Feel free to go now.”  
  
Someone growls, probably her judging by the pitch. She’s more snarly and Derek’s more rumbly. It should probably bug him that he knows that without looking, but he’s too irritated to give a shit about that right now.  
  
“We also came to give you a day’s warning.”  
  
He frowns at the sentence he’s been rereading since they stepped into his bedroom, then gives up, and spins around.  
  
“A warning for what?”  
  
They look good. Cora’s found a brush since he last saw her, her hair falling over her shoulders. There’s a glossy sheen to it, as if she’s been borrowing Lydia’s hair products. Or maybe she’s just started using conditioner, who the fuck knows. Derek, for his part, looks the way he always does, which is to say, fabulous. He’s even a little sweaty. Stiles wonders if they ran here.  
  
“We’re kidnapping you tomorrow,” Cora tells him with a smirk.  
  
“Really,” he deadpans, narrowing his eyes. “Because I thought that you were still ignoring my very existence.”  
  
She flinches at that, which makes him feel good for about five seconds. Right before the guilty look in her eyes hardens to steel. “We had some shit to sort out,” she tells him, shrugging.  
  
He sneers and doesn’t give a shit how mean he’s being right now. Doesn’t care how guilty Derek looks, standing there quietly. He’s back to Derek Hale, zen master extraordinaire, apparently, even if his eyes completely give him away. “What, _relationship shit_?”  
  
“Something like that,” she says absently, wandering over so she can collapse onto his bed, where she starfishes out like she belongs there. Derek follows her like a shadow, sliding onto the bed next to her, though thankfully remaining seated. Angry as he is, he doesn’t know how he’d react to two Hales sprawled all over his bed.  
  
He does some deep-breathing for a minute, trying to fight the anger back to manageable levels. When he can finally trust himself to talk without hissing insults their way, he sighs and asks, “So why are you kidnapping me, exactly? ‘Cause I’ve gotta say, I’ve had it up to here with kidnapping.”  
  
“I made a promise in that truck,” Derek tells him.  
  
Stiles blinks at him, combing his memory for anything that could possibly be construed as a promise and… oh. Suddenly, he’s awkward again, anger going out of him like a popped balloon.  
  
“A road trip, seriously?”  
  
Derek shrugs at him, leaning back on his elbows and bending at the waist so he can blow a raspberry against his sister’s stomach. She shrieks and it startles Stiles, how normal it feels to watch her and Derek roll across his bed, swiping at each other, before she ends up headbutting him in the jaw. “You said you wanted to,” Derek finally says, rubbing his already healed jaw and… rolling over so he can spoon Cora. Yep, there are now Hales cuddling on his bed.  
  
“Yeah, but—” He didn’t want to rope them into it or anything. It was just one of the things he said, in the truck and back when he first suggested the idea to Scott.  
  
“But nothing,” Cora scoffs. “Do you have a passport?”  
  
“...Yes,” he answers carefully. When he was fifteen, he was supposed to go to Prague for a week. It never happened, but he’s pretty sure his passport hasn’t expired yet.  
  
“Awesome,” Cora says, grinning. She nuzzles Derek’s cheek blindly, her eyes on Stiles, and woah, okay, too much. He is officially going hot all over, his ears burning, and he can’t watch them together for another moment.  
  
He turns back to his computer screen and makes a show of looking up protection wards. Meanwhile, his mind is completely occupied with what’s going on behind him. They’re quiet, so he doesn’t think they’re making out or anything, and sure enough, when he turns back around an hour and a handful of minutes later, they’re both sound asleep.  
  
They’re cute like this, sleeping curled around each other. He’s gotten used to seeing the other wolves cuddle, has even participated in a cuddle or two with Scott, but it’s different with them, because they never let anyone else see it.  
  
He’s still watching them, taking in the way that Derek’s hand frames Cora’s hip, when Derek blinks and squints over at him, eyes flaring a gentle blue in the dark.  
  
“Come to bed,” he urges, voice soft and raspy with the edge of sleep. It makes Stiles’ stomach do a weird flip-floppy thing that feels less like gas and more like butterflies. There’s heat there too, a slight surge of arousal that he knows Derek catches if the way his nostrils flare is any indication.  
  
“My bed is kind of occupied right now,” he whispers, his own voice unrecognizable.  
  
Derek’s lashes flutter against his cheek and he sighs, inhaling deeply. “There’s room for one more,” he replies gently, hauling himself and Cora backwards effortlessly. She grumbles a little, but doesn’t wake. Weird. He thought that all werewolves were light sleepers.  
  
Stiles hesitates, weighing the odds of waking up to either a boner or his father peeking in his door in the morning, or, god forbid, both. A yawn decides the matter for him and he sighs, getting to his feet just as his computer goes into standby. He’s already brushed his teeth for the night, so it’s as simple as shucking his shirt over his head and then sliding in beside Cora.  
  
“Won’t sleeping in jeans be uncomfortable?” he whispers and Derek huffs out a laugh.  
  
“Does that mean you want me to take them off?”  
  
Stiles blushes, because he can’t not. “I didn’t say that,” he protests weakly. Derek laughs again and then there’s the sounds of him moving around—kicking off his shoes and sliding out of his jeans and possibly even his shirt, then the quiet sleepy protests as he gets to work removing Cora’s.  
  
Stiles’ heart is beating so loud right now that it’s a miracle Cora hasn’t already woken up, but no, she just curls back into him after, an arm wrapping around his waist and bare skin pressing up against his back. For a moment, he’s horrified, but then he feels the cotton of her sports bra against his shoulder blades and relaxes. His brain is still whirring, but it’s comfortable like this, and slowly, it starts to wind down too.  
  
Just as he’s falling asleep, he feels the whisper of long fingers—fingers too big to be Cora’s—wrap around his hip, and thinks, okay.  
  
.  
  
Luckily, he doesn’t wake up the next morning to his dad shouting about there being two werewolves in his bed. In fact, he’s pretty sure that he hears the garage door opening as his dad heads out to work. He does, however, wake up to an awful case of morning wood and two werewolves who are wrapped around him like octopi.  
  
He’s trying—or rather, failing—at extricating himself from their limbs when Cora presses closer, her skin warm and soft against his. He freezes, cock throbbing, and almost whimpers when her arms lock tighter around his stomach. Just as he’s about to start moving again, warm lips slide gently over the knobs of his spine. He shudders, mouth caught open on a moan that he will not let out, and shifts carefully.  
  
Her lips, because he knows they’re hers—Derek’s too far away and his mouth is too big anyway—drag tantalizingly across the back of his neck, dotting little kisses across his skin and nipping here and there. He’s so still right now that his muscles are going stiff. When she finally makes it to his jugular she stops and slowly, ever so slowly, _sucks_.  
  
He does whine then, pressing back into her like — god fucking forbid — a dog in heat. She laughs quietly, the sound muffled into his skin, and nuzzles what’s sure to be a huge bruise when she’s done with it. He’s shaking with the effort to not move—to be quiet—because Derek is _right fucking there_ and his sister is macking on Stiles like she… thinks he’s Derek himself. Fuck, she probably thinks he’s Derek. Oh god.  
  
Just when he thinks it can’t get any worse, her hand starts wandering, trailing down his stomach and over the waistband of his pajamas. Thank god he didn’t strip down to just his boxers. All of his boxers have the flap, no button involved thanks very much, and it’s a regular occurrence for his dick to pop out when he’s got a morning stiffy.  
  
His breath hitches, uneven, when she reaches her destination, cupping him like she does this every day, running a finger down the length of his dick through the fabric. It jumps against her hand and he can’t actually hold it in this time, he groans—loudly enough that he hears Derek shifting on her other side.  
  
Before he can say anything, he feels her lips touch his ear, then her teeth closing around it. Her hand is sliding into his pants now and when her fist closes around his dick and pulls, he hisses. She laughs, gently, huskily, and rubs herself forward—against him, oh god—and purrs, “Want any help with this?”  
  
He’s tempted. He’s so fucking tempted. It’s hard not to be, with her hand around him, stroking him agonizingly slowly—hard not to fuck into her fist and come until he blacks out. God yes, he thinks, whining, his hips twitching into her, and is about to go fuck it and say it, when Derek moans softly and says in a sleepy voice, “Cora?”  
  
He’s out the bed and into the shower in ten seconds flat, where he jerks himself roughly, messily, for another ten seconds before coming all over the shower curtain.  
  
Fuck.  
  
.  
  
When he gets back, Cora and Derek are sitting on his bed, fully clothed once more. They’re both blushing, but Cora’s got this determined look on her face and a sharp-toothed grin that says they’re not discussing this right now and maybe ever.  
  
True to form, she springs up the moment he walks into the room, still grinning, and asks, “Are you okay with flying?”  
  
He hasn’t flown since he was seven years old, but back then he didn’t have any problems, so he just shrugs. “Sure.”  
  
“Okay, then. Pack your shit.”  
  
He tries to press them for details. Pack for warm weather? Cold weather? It’s close to the middle of March, so while Beacon Hills has already embraced Spring, he knows that not everywhere in the world has. They’re pretty tight-lipped about it though, telling him to pack for both. They’re equally shifty about how long they’ll be gone.  
  
“Does my dad even know?” he asks as he’s locking up the house. Derek’s already beelined straight to his jeep, so he guesses that they did run here last night after all.  
  
“We told him yesterday while you were out,” Cora explains, stealing the keys from him while he’s distracted.  
  
“And he was just fine with it?”  
  
“Well, not at first. But Scott backed us up. Told him it would be good for you. He’s gonna pick your jeep up from the airport later by the way.”  
  
“If you say so,” Stiles says, somewhat dubiously, wrinkling his nose at her when she slides into the driver’s seat and sticks her tongue out at him. He tries to get into the passenger seat, but Derek manhandles him and his luggage easily into the back.  
  
The nearest airport is a couple hours drive, one that he spends listening to Cora and Derek bicker over the radio, slapping at each other like idiots. When they get to the airport, they pointedly don’t let him look at the departures list. It’s only kind of disturbing. They don’t even let him look at their gate number.  
  
“Don’t you guys think this is kind of overkill?” he asks, giving them a look as Cora claps her hands over his ears when the flight attendant starts talking. “I mean, we probably have a layover somewhere anyway. You’re really going to do this song and dance then too?”  
  
“It’s a surprise, dummy. You’ll see when we get there.”  
  
They have a layover in Panama City. As much as they try to hide it from him, he still manages to catch sight of the name on a billboard. He doesn’t say anything though, just lets them feed him airport food until their next plane arrives.  
  
He’s refusing to feel warm all over about this whole thing. He is.  
  
When Cora tucks her hand into his though as they’re boarding the next flight and Derek looks at them with an unreadable expression… well, it’s hard to ignore it.  
  
.  
  
Peru. They take him to Peru.  
  
The first day they’re there, Cora takes them to the place where she spent the six years after the Hale fire. Derek’s already been there, so it isn’t new for him, but Stiles spends the entire day awed by both the horses and the scenery. Cora pulls him around the place by his hand, showing him all the little hidey-holes she’d found over the years. Derek follows them at a slightly more sedate pace, a small smile curling around his lips.  
  
The day after that, they start the four day trek up the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. By the second day he’s decided that if there’s one thing he never wants to do again, it’s climb a mountain with two werewolves.  
  
It’s worth it though, to see the way that Cora lights up every time they get to a spot with a good view, the way that Derek smiles at her as they curl into each other next to the fire in Pacamayo. It’s worth it on the third day when Derek offers to carry him down the thousand something steep steps just past Phuyupatamarca and that same night when they camp farther away from the Trekker’s Hostal and spend their time watching the stars pass overhead. The view the whole way there is spectacular, but it’s nothing compared to ascending those last fifty steep fucking steps and seeing Machu Picchu spread before him at sunrise.  
  
“Having fun yet?” Derek asks him, grinning as he nudges Stiles.  
  
He really is, actually. He’s spent most of the last four days wheezing, laughing when Cora pokes fun at him for it, and he can feel the strain in his muscles—god, he aches everywhere—but it’s freeing, being here. He’s never felt more alive.  
  
“Yeah,” he answers, grinning helplessly back. “I really am.”  
  
.  
  
After Peru, they take him to China, because they’re evil, evil people and want to make him climb more mountains to see the monasteries that they visited when they were kids. Apparently there’s a werewolf pack somewhere around there, but Derek assures him that they never care about other weres trekking through, what with all the tourists. And then, of course, because they’re in China, they have to take him to the Wall.  
  
He makes a joke about it when they pass a guard, _the watchers on the wall_ , and is stupidly pleased when they both laugh along with him.  
  
Then, because apparently Machu Picchu and China isn’t enough, they take him to Greece where they spend the next week or so touring various beaches. He’s had experience ignoring half-naked gorgeous people for the past four years, but it’s still almost painful to watch them lounge around in the sun. Their second day in Porto Katsiki Cora turns to him with a grin and offers him a tube of sunscreen, saying, “Do my back, please?”  
  
And well, that’s an experience.  
  
.  
  
By the time they’re ready to head back home, well over a month has gone by. He’s spoken with his dad and Scott a couple times, whenever they stop in at a place where they can phone home, but he’d been too distracted by everything to really give it much of a thought. With the way they’ve kept him running, every night he’d just collapsed face-first into sleep, not giving a seconds thought to the way that Cora and Derek wriggled into bed next to him.  
  
It’s probably a little strange, now that he thinks about it, but ever since that first awkward morning at his house, they’ve been perfectly cordial, hands kept firmly above waist level. There are plenty of awkward boner moments, of course, but they seem to be careful about studiously ignoring it, even that day that he woke up in Tibet with his cock nestled into the crack of Derek’s ass.  
  
Despite that, there hasn’t been enough time for anything to get awkward. Until now that is.  
  
It’s their last night in Corfu, due to fly out in the morning, and they’re apparently spending it inside the hotel. He’d care more about that, that they’re spending their last night in a foreign country cooped up, but he really is exhausted.  
  
Somewhere along the way, Cora had found a worn copy of Silence of the Lambs, and she’s reading it now, curled into Derek’s arm as Stiles channel surfs next to them. He’s content, here, with them, only partially paying attention to an old episode of badly dubbed South Park. What he’s really paying attention to is Derek’s thumb stroking over a patch of skin on Cora’s hip where her shirt has ridden up. He’s paying attention to the way her eyelashes flicker as she reads, her fingers skimming the pages.  
  
It’s hard not to—has been this whole trip—because he is helplessly attracted to them and stupidly curious and just, he’s been down this path before. He did the whole helpless obsessive crush thing with Lydia for years. And he doesn’t actually wanna go down that road this time. He doesn’t. But god, when they spend half their nights in his bed, it’s difficult to concentrate on anything else.  
  
He doesn’t know if they’ve had sex since they left Beacon Hills. He’s not sure he wants to know, since he’s pretty much been at their sides the entire time. If they did, it would have had to be a quickie in the woods while he was paying attention to travel guides or, god forbid, in the bathroom while he was asleep. He’s twenty years old and he cannot stop thinking about them. It sucks pretty hardcore.  
  
“Why are you even watching this?”  
  
It takes him a minute to drag his eyes away from Derek’s fingers and actually up to his eyes, where he’s giving Stiles a quizzical look. Stiles shakes his head, clearing his throat. It feels like sandpaper. Sounds like it too. “What?”  
  
Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “The show, Stiles. It’s in Greek.”  
  
Stiles glances over his shoulder, where sure enough, Cartman is ranting something at Kyle in a foreign language. He grins, but it’s shaky; distracted. “I’ve seen this episode a million times, dude. I could probably recite it in my sleep.”  
  
Derek’s look doesn’t change. “Then why are you watching it?” he repeats.  
  
“Hey, it’s a good episode!” he protests, waving in the direction of the tv. “First one Kenny ever died in, man.”  
  
Now he’s wondering if Derek wants to watch something else, but no, he’s pretty sure that Derek hasn’t been paying an ounce of attention to the tv. He’s been pretty locked on to Cora since they got home from lunch a couple hours ago. Cora, who is giving Stiles a look over the edge of her book, eyebrows up in the standard Hale emotive.  
  
“Uh, you can have the remote if you want?” he offers, sounding awkward even to his own ears.  
  
Cora snorts, muttering something that makes Derek _blush_. Stiles freezes, unsure, running his thumb over the buttons of the remote. “Or uh,” he starts, biting his lip. “I could go on a walk or shower? If you guys wanted some privacy?”  
  
At that, Cora actually throws her book onto the floor, where it flops dejectedly. He’d be more concerned about it, because hey, throwing books just ain’t cool, man, but it’s pretty damn fucked up already. Falling a short distance to the floor isn’t gonna hurt it more than it already has been.  
  
“You’re kidding, right?” Cora says, staring at him. It’s a pretty intense look, one that’s got his hackles rising in the seconds it takes her to turn the same look onto her brother. “Seriously? Jesus, stop pussyfooting around. I wasn’t made to waltz, gives me the spins.”  
  
“You’re a werewolf. Pretty sure that you could waltz if you wanted to,” he mutters, his brain doing an about-face as it tries to make sense of her words.  
  
Derek isn’t looking confused though. If anything, he looks sheepish, like he knows exactly what she’s talking about. He jerks his head to the side, like he wants to shake it but aborted halfway through, and Cora sneers at him, a bit of steel entering her eyes.  
  
“Fine then. I’ll do it,” she growls, and before Stiles can process that, she’s rolling out of Derek’s arms and crawling into Stiles lap. She gives him another dangerous, searching look, that goes mostly unnoticed, because _she’s in his lap_ , and then she’s kissing him.  
  
He makes a startled noise against her lips, his entire body jerking like an electric current has gone through him. Next to them, Derek makes almost the same sound, but its… gentler. Just this soft exhale of breathless surprise that has Stiles itching to see the face that goes along with it. His hands go to Cora’s hips instinctually even as his eyes seek out Derek over her shoulder.  
  
He was right in wanting to see Derek’s face, he was so, so right, wanting that, because the look knocks the breath out of his lungs. His eyes are wide, watching them, his whole face cracked with want. It’s a good look on him. Softer. Almost pretty, his lips parted, his fingers curling and uncurling like he wants to touch.  
  
It’s that more than the way Cora takes fierce, expert control of the kiss that makes him groan and arch up into her, letting his own lips part when she licks at them. It’s hot, easily in his top five kisses, and he keeps his eyes locked onto Derek even when she licks into his mouth, making a happy noise against his lips.  
  
He watches Derek bite down on his lip, as his eyes flicker blue, like the wolf is close to the surface. He wonders if Cora’s eyes are doing the same thing and when he finally looks at her, she’s watching him back.  
  
She pulls away with one last nip of his lip, just far enough back that she can press her brow against his. “This okay?” she asks, gently. He nods, slightly frantic, as she gives an experimental twist of her hips.  
  
“It uh, yeah. Totally okay with me. If it’s okay with you. And uh, D-” his breath catches in the back of his throat on the edge of a raspy moan, because if he’s not mistaken, Derek just rocked forward a little bit, like he was about to lean in and close the space between them, and _holy shit_ — “D-Derek. ‘Cause yeah, this is um.” Totally okay. Weird as fuck. _Sexier_ than any of his fantasies, jesus christ, Derek’s licking his lips.  
  
She rolls her eyes at him. “You seriously haven’t noticed?” she asks, which, what? “We thought we scared you off before we left, so we backed off, but you’ve been eye-fucking us this whole trip. Makes it hard to keep quiet, knowing that you’re a room away, wanting to fuck us as much as we want to fuck you.”  
  
“Hard to keep—” Oh. _Oh_. Guess that answers the question of whether or not they’ve been fucking this whole time, and holy jesus, knowing is worse. Knowing that they were right there as he surfed youtube or slept, probably biting their lips bloody trying to keep quiet. Shit, they would have done it in the shower too, slick and wet, Cora bouncing on Derek’s dick, and how unobservant could he be, to not notice that they were taking their showers at the same time?  
  
There’s a choked whining sound that may or may not be coming from him. “Wait, so you _both_ want—?”  
  
“Yes,” Derek growls and fuck, he’s hard. Derek is hard right now, just from watching them make out.    
  
“Oh jesus fuck,” he whimpers, canting his hips up into Cora, who practically purrs as she rolls her hips to meet him, threading her fingers into his hair. Her lips find his pulse and he feels like he’s in his bed again, with her mouth on his throat and her hand on his dick, and god, that was _on purpose_. She didn’t think he was Derek at all, she was just sleepy and horny and sick of waiting.  
  
“You do want this, don’t you?” she asks, whining as his fingers dig into her hipbones hard enough that if she was human, she’d keep those bruises for days. “Fuck.”  
  
Derek’s still watching them, his interest clear as he shifts himself up into a sitting position, propping his back up against the wall. Stiles trembles as Cora starts shoving at his sweats, holding Derek’s gaze until Cora’s got a hand around his dick. Only then does he let his head fall back, moaning long and slow as she jerks him slow and sweet.  
  
“Yeah, yes, fuck yes, jesus christ, yes,” he whines, fingers flexing as his dick jumps in her hand. His eyes flutter back open when she gives a pleased hum and purrs, “Good. Now Derek, get his shirt off for me.”  
  
He doesn’t know which of them is growling and doesn’t care much, though if he had to fathom a guess, he’d guess it was Derek, whose eyes are still bright blue as he crawls—jesus christ, crawls—over to them. He gives Stiles a long, assessing look, hooking his fingers under the bottom of his shirt. Biting his lip and valiantly ignoring his body’s demands to just keep his brain focused on fucking up into Cora’s fist, he lets go of her, raising his arms above his head.  
  
He shivers when the fabric drags against his skin as Derek yanks his shirt up and off, tossing it into a corner like its offended him with its very existence. Cora wastes no time in getting her lips and tongue all over his nipples, like she knows that they’re sensitive as fuck. And shit, maybe she does know. Maybe it’s some kind of werewolf super power, sniffing out erogenous zones. Probably not.  
  
He groans, letting his head fall back again, only this time, Derek’s fingers are scratching against his scalp, catching and supporting the base of his skull as he scoots closer.  
  
“Shit, shit, fuck,” he breathes, his own hands shaky as they gravitate back to Cora’s hips. She’s doing her level best to kill him, grinding herself against his thigh like she can’t help it. They’d all been dressed down for the night and he’s thankful for that now, because that means he only has cotton shorts and a tank top to get her out of before he’s got her naked on top of him.  
  
It’s like she’s reading his mind, because she twists in his lap, dragging her tank top over her head and then he’s got a face full of warm, soft tits. Despite the whole werewolf thing, he’s never actually seen her in anything less than a sports bra, so it’s all new skin for him to map out, preferably with his tongue. Her nipples are tight and a dusky brown color, smaller than the girl’s from that party Scott dragged him to last summer. He loves them. They’re perfect, he thinks, licking one into his mouth before he even thinks about getting his hands all over them. When he rolls one between his teeth, she whimpers, the steady rhythm she’d had going faltering as she shudders all over.  
  
She tastes like salt and sweat, very faintly of the sunscreen he’d spread over her earlier that day, and it’s perfect, it really is. It’s been too long since he’s had this. Too long since he’s had a warm body pressed against his—too long since he’s had someone who wants him all over them. He groans, biting down a bit harder than he’d usually be comfortable with, but she’s a fucking werewolf, and he knows from his mind numbingly horrifying conversations with Scott that a bit of pain isn’t going to put her off any.  
  
“Fuck,” she hisses, her grip on him loosening as he works a hand into her shorts, brushing his thumb across her clit as he slides one finger knuckle-deep inside of her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Derek, I swear to god, his fingers are better than we thought they’d be.”  
  
He whimpers when Derek’s hand tightens in his hair. He hadn’t forgotten that Derek was there—far from it, he can feel Derek’s heat all the way down his side—but hearing her say his name is fucking awesome, knowing that Derek’s right there, watching. His dick jumps again and she laughs, breathlessly, rocking into his hand. He slides another finger in next to the first, listening happily as her breath hitches in her throat.  
  
“You should be getting naked,” he breathes into her ear, tugging gently at her earlobe the way she had his earlier. The first time he’d tried actually talking during sex, he almost hadn’t recognized the way his voice went dark and shivery, raspy with want. He’d been surprised then and so had his partner, coming with a shriek just like that. Both Cora and Derek apparently agree, because Cora growls in his ear and Derek _moans_ , the sound doing terrible things to him.  
  
“I am naked,” she protests, clawing at his back with thankfully human nails as he twists his fingers inside of her.  
  
“No, you’re mostly naked,” he chuckles, tugging on her shorts pointedly.  
  
“Well, so are you. And Derek’s completely dressed.”  
  
They both turn as one to look at Derek, who is still pressed up against Stiles’ side, biting down on his lip so hard that there’s a streak of blood across them.  
  
Stiles leans in without thinking and licks it off, laughing at the high, unmistakably aroused noise that Derek makes in response.  
  
“Kiss him,” he hears Cora whisper, and doesn’t even know which of them she’s talking to. Not that it matters, because they’re already meeting in the middle before the words even finish leaving her lips.  
  
Derek’s lips are softer than hers—a bit thinner too, his mouth wider—and that difference between the two of them shouldn’t turn him on as much as the feel of stubble against his jaw, but it totally does. He whines low in his throat, because it feels like they’ve been building up to this for years. All that sexual tension that used to simmer beneath Stiles’ skin erupts and he thinks breathlessly of all those times that Derek had slammed him into walls and doors and wishes that he’d been getting shoved against them for an entirely different reason. Fuck that, and now he can be. He’s pretty sure that if he asked Derek right now to slam him up against the bedroom wall and fuck him until he couldn’t stand, he’d say something along the lines of fuck yes.  
  
Another day, though. Another day, or hell, maybe later tonight, when he’s not getting distracted by the way Derek takes hold of his head and drags him in closer. It’s so fucking awesome that he almost misses Cora sliding out of his lap—probably would have actually missed it if Derek didn’t take that absence as an invitation to rip Stiles out of his sweatpants altogether and haul his now naked ass into his lap.  
  
He really hopes that this means Cora’s taking the time to get out of her shorts.  
  
“Why the fuck are you still dressed?” he hisses in between kisses, his voice high and breathy as he grinds himself into Derek’s lap. Thank god for sweats, he thinks as Derek shoves them down so he can get a hand around both of their cocks and jesus fucking christ, he can’t do this. He can’t. He is going to come so hard that he _dies_ if they keep this up. “Cora, where the fuck are you? Be a bro and get your brother out of his clothes.”  
  
This turns out to be a mistake, because he has to pull away from Derek so that Cora can pull his shirt off. He isn’t willing to get out of Derek’s lap in order for the pants to come off, so they have to do a weird shimmy that probably looks ridiculous, but feels great, because their cocks keep sliding together.  
  
He blinks when Cora tosses something down on his thigh and glances down distractedly, only to do a double take when he realizes what exactly it is. He eyes her, startled, as Derek, apparently bereft without Stiles’ lips to keep him company, moves on to his throat, suckling and nipping the area into what is probably going to be one hell of a hickey come morning.  
  
She is naked now, smirking as she crawls back onto the bed, sliding across so she can lock her lips onto _the other side of Stiles’ neck_. He is going to have matching hickeys in the shape of two different mouths. He isn’t even going to pretend that that doesn’t get to him.  
  
“He wants you to fuck him,” she whispers in his ear, her breath hot on his skin. On his opposite side, Derek muffles a loud moan against the side of his neck, rutting up against him. He just knows Cora is grinning right now, can feel the upturned curves of her lips on his skin. “He wants your cock so bad, Stiles. You have no idea how many nights he spent on his hands and knees in front of me, wishing that my dildos were you.”  
  
He jerks sharply and has to actually grab hold of the base of his dick to keep from coming right then and there, a high, thin cry making its way past his lips. She laughs at him and he watches with narrowed eyes as she shifts so that she can press her cheek against her brother’s, nuzzling him with a dangerous look in her eyes. “You want it, don’t you Derek? Tell Stiles that you want his pretty cock.”  
  
“I want it,” Derek gasps, dick jumping against his belly. He looks wrecked, eyes wide and locked to the sight of Stiles’ fingers closing around the lube that Cora had tossed at him. “Fuck, Stiles. I want you.”  
  
Stiles hisses, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. This isn’t his first time. It isn’t even his second. But it is his first time with someone he’s desperately wanted since high school, someone who apparently wants him to fuck them. He thinks about asking for a condom, but he remembers that awkward pack meeting where Derek had to explain to them that werewolves couldn’t pass on STDs because Isaac swore up and down that some chick had given him crabs.  
  
“What about you?” he asks Cora, slanting his eyes over to where she’s watching them both with a pleased expression.  
  
She shrugs at him, leaning back so that she’s reclining on the pillows. “I’m patient,” she purrs. “Plus, I get to watch the show.”  
  
That’s all the permission he needs, urging Derek up and out of his lap, as much as it pains him to do so. Derek’s all loose and pliant limbs as he rolls onto his hands and knees and for a precious second, Stiles hesitates, all of Derek spread out before him. He doesn’t know where to start.  
  
“Start with the lube, Stiles,” Cora remarks, amused. When he pulls his eyes away from Derek’s ass, it’s to the sight of her coaxing Derek between her legs. He goes easily, burying his face between them with the easy familiarity of two people that have been fucking for a while. She moans, flashing Stiles a wicked look as he kneels there, gaping at the sight of them. “Come on Stiles, we’ve got all night and trust me when I say that I want to make the best of it.”  
  
After that, he’s quick to slick his fingers with lube. He hesitates one more time, his fingers brushing against the rim of Derek’s hole, long enough that Derek growls, reaching around blindly and yanking Stiles’ hand closer.  
  
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he laughs. Then he slides one finger inside.  
  
He takes his time, both because Derek seems to hate it and because he actually likes this part. Of the three people he’s slept with, only one of them was a dude, but they’d been together off and on for a better part of a month, so he’s had plenty of practice. Somewhere between their first and second encounter, he’d realized that he loved teasing them open, loved fucking them with his fingers until they were coming apart at the seams and breathless with the need to be fucked.  
  
So he does actually take his time, even though he knows Derek can handle a bit of pain. He goes slow, shallowly fucking him with just the one finger, barely up to the first knuckle before moving on to a second when Derek jerks against Cora like he’s going to turn around and hit him. He fingers Derek until Derek is panting, jerking back against him. Cora is watching them both with wide eyes, her hips moving against Derek’s face, her fingers clenched tight in his hair to keep him there.  
  
“You’ve done this before,” Cora breathes at some point, Derek making desperate, growly sound between them.  
  
“Once or twice,” Stiles smirks and knows he isn’t imagining the shudder that ripples across Derek’s back.  
  
After what might be ten minutes but is probably closer to twenty she finally flashes her eyes at him and pushes Derek off of her.  
  
Stiles blinks—just the one blink—and Derek is on him, sliding into his lap, his eyes wild as he grips Stiles’ dick in one hand, guiding it into place before sinking back.  
  
Stiles whimpers—loudly—as Derek takes him in to the root immediately. They both breathe out a sigh of relief and distantly, he’s aware of Cora laughing again.  
  
From his nose down, Derek’s face is slick and shining from Cora, and Stiles groans again, reeling Derek in for a greedy, desperate kiss. She tastes good on Derek’s lips. She’d probably taste even better if it was Stiles between her legs, but whatever. Later.  
  
The pace that Derek sets is faster than Stiles usually likes—rough and desperate. He takes Stiles’ dick like a fucking pro, like he’s been dreaming about this moment for years. He rides Stiles like he wants to fuck him into the bed and keep him there for the next week, like he wants to keep Stiles inside of him forever.  
  
It’s hot and just shy of too much, so he isn’t surprised when he comes some fifteen minutes later, nearly blacking out from the intensity of it.  
  
Derek keeps riding him through it, even as he tightens up, coming himself not a moment later.  
  
“Fuck,” he whimpers as Derek pulls off of him, both of them collapsing backwards in a boneless sprawl against Cora’s legs.  
  
“Fuck, sorry, did you even get off?” he asks Cora, glancing up at her. He wraps a hand around her ankle and she just smirks down at him.  
  
“Yes,” she tells him. “Now catch your breath. Round two is in fifteen minutes.”  
  
.  
  
“You know,” Cora says into the quiet afterwards, when they’re all fucked out and happily sore. “We almost didn’t get together, at first.”  
  
Her voice is quiet, almost dreamy with afterglow, soft with thought. Stiles blinks in surprise, his eyelashes dragging against the skin of Derek’s chest, which is going tight as tension curls through Derek’s frame.  
  
“‘Cause of the, y’know, incest thing?” he asks, flapping a hand in Cora’s general direction even as he nuzzles his face into Derek’s skin. He doesn’t quite relax, but some of the tension leaks out of him. Not much, but some. Enough that the hand curled into Stiles’ hair resumes its petting.  
  
Cora laughs, the sound vibrating through the knobs of his spine, where her mouth is pressed. “No,” she says, shortly. “With all the shit we went through over it, that was never actually something that came up.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“It isn’t such a stigma for werewolves,” she explains, wrapping further around him, kicking one bare leg over the curve of his hip. Her lady parts are totally all over his lower back, but it’s not as distracting as it would have been if he hadn’t been up close and personal with those same lady parts not even thirty minutes ago. “From a human perspective, sure, incest is weird and creepy—we get that. Scott wouldn’t understand it. Lydia wouldn’t understand it. We thought that _you_ wouldn’t understand it.”  
  
At that, she gives him a look, lifting her head up off of him to peer down at him with shiny, wolf-vision eyes. “But for us… Think about it. For born werewolves, _family_ is pack and _pack_ is family. Bringing in a mate from outside is the same as getting a new brother or sister. It’s still not common, but it happens often enough that if Derek had ended up with Laura or me, our family wouldn’t have lost their shit over it.”  
  
He’s nodding, distracted by the way that Derek had shivered when Cora mentioned their sister. It makes sense in a weird kind of way. But they’re right. Scott sure wouldn’t get it, nor would the rest of their pack of bitten werewolves and more-or-less humans. “So why did it almost not happen?” he asks.  
  
“Cora,” Derek growls, and there’s that tension, back for a second round. He’s been silent so far, but that isn’t surprising. Stiles learned a while ago that for the most part, Cora acts as his voice.  
  
“No, Derek,” Cora snarls back. “He deserves to know.”  
  
He’s starting to get the feeling that he’s not going to like what she’s about to say. He stays silent though, as the two of them trade growls and snarls back and forth until Derek finally relents with a huff. He’s still tense, so Stiles hums and digs a thumb into whatever muscle is beneath his hand.  
  
“It was because of you,” Cora finally sighs. He startles.  
  
“Me?” he squawks, flailing when he tries to sit up, only to be held in place by two supernaturally strong hands.  
  
“You,” Cora tells him, rolling him to the side so he can look at her properly. He doesn’t protest, even though the new position means that he’s not going to be able to see Derek’s reaction unless he cranes his neck around.  
  
“Okay. I’ll bite. Why me?”  
  
She smiles at him, playfully biting at his neck. The feel of her human teeth against his skin is sadly reassuring at this point. It means he’s asking the right questions. Reacting the way she wants him to. “Because Derek’s been half in love with you since you were sixteen years old.”  
  
He holds himself very still, ignoring the painful urge to seek out Derek’s eyes. To ask him if this is true.  
  
“I was so jealous of you, you know,” she tells him wistfully. “You smelled like him, like pack more than any of his betas. You smelled like his mate before you even knew what that word meant. It was so stupid, the way you two bickered and danced around each other. I wanted to grab him by the balls and shake him until he manned up and told you. Then we left and I found out why he hadn’t.”  
  
“Why hadn’t he?” he whispers. His mouth is dry and his muscles ache with the need to turn over and see how Derek is reacting to this.  
  
“Because you were young,” she snorts. “You were young and he didn’t want to force you into it like that. He wanted to give you a choice.”  
  
He can’t control it anymore, scooting up into a sitting position so that he can easily look at Derek too. Neither of them move much, relocating their heads to his thighs instead of his torso. “And how was I supposed to know that _Derek was a choice_ if he didn’t _tell_ me?”  
  
At that, Derek flinches. “I couldn’t,” he mutters. “You already had so much going on. I couldn’t tell you that you—”  
  
Smelled like mate. What does that even mean?  
  
“It’s potential,” Cora tells him, sighing as she gives up on using his thigh as a pillow and gets herself into a sitting position, drawing her legs up beneath her. “You can smell like mate and not be someone’s mate. It’s like that surge of chemistry the two of you have every time you’re in a room together, only magnified by a thousand.”  
  
“Not a thousand,” Derek protests, keeping his cheek stubbornly pressed to Stiles’ thigh.  
  
Cora rolls her eyes. “Okay, like a hundred. Whatever. The point is that you’ve smelled like potential to Derek since the two of you first met and somewhere along the line, it became more than just that for him. Enough to make you his anchor.”  
  
A jolt runs down Stiles’ spine, because this—this is new information. New and kind of terrifying information that leaves him staring down at the back of Derek’s hand in something akin to wonder. “What? When?”  
  
“Abomination,” Derek mutters into his thigh, lips dragging against the skin there. Stiles frowns, his first impulse being offense. Anger. His knuckles go white in the sheets, and let it never be said that he isn’t completely rational, because the word isn’t clicking. Then he remembers pool water and the warmth of Derek’s body in a dark pool room, heavy enough that Stiles’ limbs had burned for days. He remembers the way that Derek had looked at him in the aftermath, his eyes so wide. Surprise, awe, whatever. It had been weird then, to see that much emotion of Derek’s face. Now he knows why it was there. Guess Derek does remember that night.  
  
“Holy shit,” he whispers and Cora laughs.  
  
“See? You’ve had him for longer than me and you didn’t even know it. I thought that when I sent him back to Beacon Hills that first time, he would tell you, but then…”  
  
Yeah. The nogitsune happened and Derek probably thought Stiles was too broken to even consider dealing with something like _mates_. Jesus.  
  
“So what happens now?” he asks nervously. “Do the two of you just ride off into the sunset, having successfully gotten me out of Derek’s system?”  
  
Cora hits him across the back of the head, scowling at him. “Not even, dumbass. Don’t be stupid.”  
  
There’s a gust of breath over his thigh and Derek growls quietly, finally removing his head from Stiles lap, shifting around so that he can actually meet Stiles’ eyes. They watch each other, quiet, Stiles taking in the way that Derek’s shoulders are hunched up, like he’s braced for a punch or rejection, hell, maybe even both. He doesn’t know what Derek’s looking for in him, but after another moment, Derek sighs, a wry smile curling around his lips.  
  
“What happens now is entirely up to you,” he tells Stiles earnestly. “This is me telling you that this—us, me and Cora—is a choice for you. That you can have us every day for the rest of your life if you want. Or if you want to forget all about this, we will. I didn’t want to rope you into a decision when you were sixteen and I’m not going to make you choose us now. It’s up to you.”  
  
Stiles licks his lips, unwilling to blink. “What about you?” he asks Cora softly, refusing to break his stare off with Derek long enough to glance her way. His heart is pounding all over again. This is something he’d never, not in his wildest dreams, considered. High school would have been so much easier if he’d known that the first person he’d given two shits about since Lydia Martin cared about him too. He licks his lips, voice stuttering in his throat. “Derek’s in love with me, got it. But what about you? Do you want this with me?”  
  
Cora has the nerve to laugh and it’s that that forces his eyes away from Derek’s. She’s grinning at him, tucking her hair behind her ear. Naked and laughing is a good look on her, he thinks. “Do you really think I would have slept with you if I wasn’t interested?”  
  
Fair point. “Well. I’m sure it won’t surprise _you_ any,” he tells her, licking his lips again, suddenly nervous. “But I’ve been gone on Derek for years. I just got really good at telling myself it would never happen.”  
  
He ignores the gutted look on Derek’s face, because there’s no use on dwelling on what-ifs. If him and Derek had gotten together back then, Cora wouldn’t be in this room with them right now. She nods at him though, confirming that she wasn’t as blind as her brother. “And me?” she asks, cocking her head at him.  
  
“And you…” He bites his lip, wondering how to phrase this. “When you stopped breathing in that ambulance and I had to give you CPR, I said that the next time my lips were touching yours, you better not be unconscious.”  
  
“I was—”  
  
He holds up a hand to stop her. He knows that there’s no way she’d heard that, what with her being unconscious. “Back then, I’m pretty sure I had a crush on you because you were _Derek’s sister_. But the last couple weeks have been something else. I—” he stops, biting his lip. His hands are shaking and his chest is tight. Man up, Stilinski, christ. “—I know you now and even if I don’t love you yet, I will.”  
  
She smiles softly, thrusting her fist out, like she’s offering… He snorts, raising an eyebrow as he bumps their knuckles together gently. He wonders if there’s an etiquette for this kind of thing, because he’s never once fistbumped someone after having sex. It is possible that he’s fistbumped someone after having an emotional discussion, but that was Scott, so it didn’t really count.  
  
“So we’re all in this together, yeah?” he says and she rolls her eyes, muttering something about never ever quoting High School Musical while he’s in bed with her again, but he just grins back at her before shifting his focus to Derek.  
  
Derek, who’s already nodding, his eyes that unfamiliar shade of soft that Stiles has a feeling he’s going to spend quite some time getting used to.  
  
If someone had told sixteen year old him that four years down the road he’d be in a hotel room in Greece having spent the last couple hours having sex with two very attractive werewolves, he would have laughed them right out the door.  
  
Now—  
  
Well, now he thinks he can probably get used to it.  
  
.  
  
“Well, this is different. I’m not used to you being, y’know, _conscious_ while we’re trapped together in mortal peril.”  
  
Cora snorts at him, blood on her lips. She’s shaking, but the gaping wound in her gut is already healing, so he’s not too worried about it. He’s more concerned with the binding spell etched into the damp floor around them, at the walls crawling with ivy. He really doesn’t like being underground.  
  
“Would you rather have Derek to keep you company?” she asks, attempting to push herself into a sitting position.  
  
He shrugs. “Definitely more used to it by now.”  
  
She barks out another short, sharp laugh and gives him a grin as she twines their hands together.  
  
“Don’t worry, Stilinski. Derek will find us,” she tells him, taking a look at their surroundings and wrinkling her nose.  
  
Stiles is twenty-two years old and by now, he’s learned to just accept that if there’s something that goes bump in the night, it will find him. Being the emissary to the McCall pack and the mate to two born werewolves will do that to you. Good thing he’s great at adapting. He squeezes her hand, his fingers seeking out the tattoo at the bend of his elbow. It glows a faint blue in the gloom and he smiles as his thumb brushes against it. It’s warm to the touch. Bearing the mark of a Hale is really so much better than his shitty tracking amulets.  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers softly, settling in against her to wait. “I know he will.”


End file.
